Our baby’s sleep has been a pretty big focus for us. Namely, our baby not getting enough of it and therefore us not getting enough of it. Our baby’s sleep still isn’t phenomenal, but when they aren’t going through anythng- it actually sorted itself out without much help from us. 6-8 hours straight, waking up for a bottle (we’re working on that) around 5 am, then back to sleep for a few hours.

Even on the nights that our baby wakes up a lot, it still doesn’t feel as bad. And I realized that part of that may have been because, 3 months ago, our baby started absolutely refusing to use the potty.

If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you know that we gave Elimination Communication a try. I can’t remember if I talked about how our baby had started staying dry and using the potty at night, but they did. They were better at pottying at night than they were during the day. They’d wake up, get into a crouch as their signal, and then I’d put them on the potty and they’d go. Usually the diaper was dry so I’d just put it back on.

Holding a barely awake toddler on the potty isn’t really fun for anyone, and having to do it multiple times a night cuts into your sleep quality more than just getting up to change the diaper.

This was something that I was really torn about. I was proud of my baby for being able to, hoped it would mean we wouldn’t have to struggle with night training down the line, and wanted to encourage this. It seriously cut into my sleep and I resented it deeply. My partner would do it some nights as well, but was never as comfortable with putting our baby on the potty and, because at the time I couldn’t drive, my partner often needed the sleep more than I did.

I don’t really know if part of the reason that sleep isn’t as big a deal anymore is because EC got stopped. Our baby’s also had more times of staying dry for hours, and still wakes and fusses right before peeing at night a lot of the time, but it’s easier when you don’t have to get out of bed.

It’s more something that I don’t see talked about with EC too often that definitely should influence your decision on whether it’s right for your family or not. They do talk about how to potty a baby at night, but I don’t really see people talking about how this can effect sleep (yours or your baby’s).